


Where The Daisies Will Never Grow

by neonstardust



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pushing Daisies Fusion, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 17:44:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14623845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonstardust/pseuds/neonstardust
Summary: The rules are clear, unchanging:One touch. One minute. One chance.One consequence for breaking the rules:Death.





	Where The Daisies Will Never Grow

A simple box in an empty room, the coffin is nothing special, unadorned and plain, yet the place feels liminal, transcending space and time. A place he shouldn’t be. Kuroo’s warning still rings in his ears: he’ll have only a few minutes.

Not that it matters. He only needs one.

One minute. Akaashi steps forward. Before him, Bokuto lies perfectly still. He’s different. Older. Quieter. Pale hair sweeps across his forehead, streaked with black. The thinnest of lines on his face reveal a life of smiles and laughter.

A life Akaashi couldn’t be part of.

Chest constricting, Akaashi sets the timer on his watch. He has a job to do. But his thoughts twist and scream and stutter to a halt, blooming and withering like the carnations that line the funeral home walls. As Akaashi reaches for Bokuto’s hand, his memories ripple and grow, showing another world, another lifetime, where daisies blossom by the thousands, where Bokuto was alive, smiling and strong and carefree, where death didn’t cling to Akaashi like a second shadow that no amount of light can destroy. A world he kissed goodbye, along with everyone he held dear.

Snatching his hand away, Akaashi nearly turns for the door, but his feet root him to the ground. He needs to do this. Not for Kuroo. Not to solve Bokuto’s murder. No… He needs to do this for himself.

Hand trembling, Akaashi touches Bokuto’s cheek.

Bokuto gasps. Breath hits his lungs hard, and he bolts upright, eyes wide with alarm.

Akaashi’s speech, so well-rehearsed, dies on his tongue. “Kou.”

“Kou?” Bokuto touches his cheek, almost reverently, as if aware of something beyond his understanding. “I haven’t heard that name since I was a kid, when I played with…” Bokuto freezes, face splitting into a wide smile. “Akaashi!”

The clocks ticks slowly. Akaashi’s heart pounds, burning a hole through his chest, but he takes a deep breath. “I was too casual. I apologize, Bokuto-san.”

“No—” Bokuto slams his legs against the coffin in his haste to stand. “Kou is good.” Pain strains his voice into a high whine, and he clutches his knee.

“Kou…” Akaashi pauses, steels himself for the words he’s said a dozen times before, pretends they don’t slice his throat like ragged thorns. “You will die again in less than a minute. Tell me… how you died.”

Bokuto’s smile falls. “I was strangled.”

“By who?”

“I dunno. They were behind me. Do…” Bokuto shrugs with an anxious, hollow laugh. “Do I really have to die again?”

Akaashi swallows hard. “Yes.” If he doesn’t, someone else will.

“Oh...” No doubts, no pleas or excuses, but Bokuto looks up at Akaashi with a wobbly smile. “Will it hurt?”

“No.” The word tastes like ash in his mouth. “We just have to touch.” Without thinking, Akaashi finds himself moving closer, the uncertainty from before evaporating. He’s still Bokuto. Still the same boy Akaashi kissed goodbye in a graveyard washed red with a melancholy sunset. Still his one and only friend. As Bokuto leans closer, coming to meet him half way, bitter irony twists his stomach.

Another kiss goodbye.

Another person gone, forever.

Bokuto’s breath ghosts warmly across his lips, but ice fills Akaashi’s veins. “I’m glad I could see you, one last time.” And Bokuto smiles, gaze radiating love, looking at Akaashi as if he isn’t an angel of death, as if Akaashi is the one to come back to life for only a minute, as if he never stopped loving Akaashi for even a second, all these years.

“What if you didn’t have to die?” 

The world freezes, but Akaashi’s watch ticks steadily. Lips a mere inch apart, walking a thin line between life and death, a new light shines in Bokuto’s eyes. “You mean, I can stay with you?”

 _Yes._ A whisper. A scream. A cry. A chorus of voices with only one answer, yet all Akaashi can do is nod. On his wrist, his watch hits twelve. No timer. No alarm. From the very beginning, he never had what it would take to kill Bokuto.

But as his heart stirs with a hope long since dead, Akaashi knows he wants it to be no other way.


End file.
